Car title arrived yesterday!

[dmg36054]

I had a particular problem that affects only a very small percentage of us, but it finally got resolved yesterday. Although it is an uncommon occurance, I thought I'd share my experience. The nice folks at the DMV in Alabama said they had never seen this before, so I'm probably the only one in the state this has ever happened to. Lucky me.

My spider is a 1981, which happens to be the model year that all manufacturers were required to have a 17 digit VIN. That requirement took effect in September of 1980, for the 1981 cars. My car was built in June of 1980, and it is a 1981 model.

Most manufacturers went ahead and used the 17 digit VIN for all of their 1981 model cars. Ahhh, but not Fiat. For their 1981 models cars built before September 1980, they kept the old VIN format, which only has 14 digits.

The DMV computers basically insist that all 1981 cars simply must have a 17 digit VIN. So it has taken me seven months and four different application attempts to get this all worked out. I've done a lot of diggin' and googlin' just to find out what is going on, and then a lot of letter writin' and phone callin' to prove my findings to the DMV.

But I now have in my hand a beautiful title for this fine piece of Italian automotive engineering.

[Italchic]

I had a similar problem here in Ohio, but my situation was that I was basically given a Spider but with no title. The original had been lost in another state. The car was saved from the scrap heap at an estate auction. I had a time getting one but after three months and a lot of work, I too have a clean title to my '71.

[tartan18]

Similar problem for me in Oregon. What finally resolved things is that the VIN tab behind the windshield and the riveted plate on the car had the same VIN even though it lacked the requisite number of digits. DMV had to either accept what was on the car or gin up a fake number by adding digits to make their computers happy. Finally reason prevailed and they issued me a clean title with my non-conforming VIN.